My boss asked me if it would be possible to do the following with our filemaker recruitment system.

They would like to have job applicants send in their application as an attachment to an email...

they would like filemaker to check the email account and..

1. if the subject line has a application # in it , the attached file & text of the email will be added to the matching applicant's record

2. if the subject line does not contain an application #, then the email will go into a queue to be dealt with.. so that the user

can either a. create a record for this person, or b. attach the email to the appropriate record.

basically, we're trying to come up with a way to gather application material on job applicants (CV, additional documents from the candidate, and ALSO have a way for the reference letter writers to send in their material directly into the system in a way that minimized /eliminates the need for administrative paper-pushing , data entry, etc.)

could anyone offer up any opinions on how they might take first steps toward such a system.. if not in filemaker, then with a more appropriate tool ??

thanks in advance :-)

If you want Filemaker to directly read email into a field, you'll either have to use some sort of external scripting, or a plugin like POP3it or mail.it.

Dana

On a Mac there is also AppleScript, FileMaker's Perform AppleScript step. But, as Reed says, it's easier to just receive these emails with FileMaker itself, via a dedicated email address (you probably don't want all your email going into the FileMaker file).